Angelicum Thomistic Institute

"Conscience, Relativism and Truth: The Witness of Newman" Archbishop Anthony Fisher, OP (Sydney) Response: Thomas Farr (President of the Religious Freedom Institute, Washington, D.C.) These talks were given as part of the Thomistic Institute Conference "Newman the Prophet: A Saint for Our Times" which was part of the official program for the canonization weekend of John Henry Cardinal Newman and held at the Angelicum in Rome on October 12, 2019. Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP, He was born in Sydney on 10 March 1960. After graduating with first-class honours, Archbishop Fisher practised law at Clayton Utz in Sydney. He took leave from his legal job and backpacked around Europe to discern his vocation. Archbishop Fisher made his perpetual vows for the Dominicans on 18 February 1987, and was ordained a priest at Holy Name Parish, Wahroonga, on 14 September 1991.On 18 September 2014, Pope Francis appointed Bishop Anthony the ninth Archbishop of Sydney. His installation took place at St Mary’s Cathedral on Wednesday, 12 November 2014. In 2015, Pope Francis appointed Archbishop Fisher to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. He was also appointed an honorary member of the Pontifical Academy of St Thomas Aquinas. He has continued as a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life. Thomas Farr, He serves as President of the Religious Freedom Institute, a non-profit that works to advance religious freedom for everyone, both as a source of individual human dignity and flourishing, and as a source of political stability, economic development, and international security. A leading authority on international religious freedom, Dr. Farr served for 28 years in the U.S. Army and the U.S. Foreign Service. In 1999 he became the first director of the State Department's Office of International Religious Freedom. He subsequently directed the Witherspoon Institute's International Religious Freedom (IRF) Task Force, was a member of the Chicago World Affairs Council’s Task Force on Religion and U.S. Foreign Policy, taught at the National Defense University, and served on the Secretary of State’s IRF working group. From 2008 – 2018 Dr. Farr was Associate Professor of the Practice of Religion and World Affairs at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. He also directed the Religious Freedom Project at Georgetown’s Berkley Center. A PhD in History from the University of North Carolina, Farr is a senior fellow at the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University. He serves as a consultant to the U.S. Catholic Bishops Committee on International Justice and Peace; on the boards of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, Christian Solidarity Worldwide-USA, and Saint John Paul the Great Catholic High School; and on the boards of advisors of the Alexander Hamilton Society, and the National Museum of American Religion. Farr teaches regularly at the U.S. Foreign Service Institute.

"The Idea of a University: Catholics in Modern Education" Tracey Rowland (University of Notre Dame, Australia; International Theological Commission) Response: Fr. Guy Nicholls, Cong. Orat. These talks were given as part of the Thomistic Institute Conference "Newman the Prophet: A Saint for Our Times" which was part of the official program for the canonization weekend of John Henry Cardinal Newman and held at the Angelicum in Rome on October 12 2019. Professor Rowland's primary degrees were in law and government from the University of Queensland. She then completed a Bachelor of Letters in Philosophy from the University of Melbourne and a Master of Arts degree in political philosophy, also from the University of Melbourne, along with a Graduate Diploma in German language, and the Goethe Institute's Certificate of German as a foreign language. She then won a Commonwealth Scholarship to Cambridge University where she wrote her doctoral dissertation on twentieth century theological engagements with the idea of culture, with reference to the philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre and the theology of Henri de Lubac and Joseph Ratzinger. In 2001 she was appointed the Dean of the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family in Melbourne, a position she held until 2017. During this period she also completed the pontifical degrees, a Licentiate in Sacred Theology and a Doctorate in Sacred Theology, both from the Lateran. Father Guy Nicholls, holds a first degree in Classics from Cambridge, an STL from the Gregorian University, Rome, and a D.Phil from Oxford. He is a priest of the Birmingham Oratory and the Founder and Director of the John Henry Newman Institute of Liturgical Music, and a Lecturer at Oscott College, the Birmingham Diocesan Seminary. He has co-authored a volume on Blessed Cardinal Newman as an educator in the Continuum Library of Educational Thought, and has contributed articles to many journals on a wide variety of liturgical subjects. He is presently preparing for publication a book on Cardinal Newman’s aesthetics, Unearthly Beauty.

"Thoughtful Belief in a Secular Age: The Grammar of Assent" Archbishop Bernard Longley (Birmingham) Response: Sr. Catherine Joseph Droste, OP (Angelicum) These talks were given as part of the Thomistic Institute Conference "Newman the Prophet: A Saint for Our Times" which was part of the official program for the canonization weekend of John Henry Cardinal Newman and held at the Angelicum in Rome on October 12 2019. Archbishop Bernard Longley studied at Xaverian College and the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester and New College, Oxford. He was ordained to the priesthood for the Diocese of Arundel and Brighton on 12th December 1981 at St John’s Seminary, Wonersh. From 1987 to 1996 he was on the staff at St John’s Seminary, Wonersh, teaching dogmatic theology. In 1991, he was appointed Surrey Chairman of the Arundel and Brighton Diocesan Commission for Christian Unity and in 1996 became National Ecumenical Officer at the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales. He was ordained Bishop and appointed as an Auxiliary Bishop of the Diocese of Westminster in 2003. Archbishop Longley was Head of the Diocesan Pastoral Board and had pastoral responsibilities for the Deaneries of Camden, Hackney, Islington, Marylebone, Tower Hamlets, and Westminster. The Archbishop was appointed by Pope Benedict XVI in October 2009 and was installed as the ninth Archbishop of Birmingham on Tuesday 8th December 2009. In 2011 Pope Benedict appointed the Archbishop as the co-Chairman of ARCIC, with oversight of the third phase of Anglican-Catholic dialogue. Sr. Catherine Joseph Droste, OP is a Dominican Sister of St. Cecilia, Nashville, TN. Sr. Droste currently serves as Professor and Dean of Theology at the Pontifical University of St Thomas in Rome (The Angelicum).

This talk was given as part of the Thomistic Institute Conference "Newman the Prophet: A Saint for Our Times" which was part of the official program for the canonization weekend of John Henry Cardinal Newman and held at the Angelicum in Rome on October 12 2019. Introduction by Fr. Thomas Joseph White. George Weigel, Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is a Catholic theologian and one of America’s leading public intellectuals. He holds EPPC’s William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies. From 1989 through June 1996, Mr. Weigel was president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he led a wide-ranging, ecumenical and inter-religious program of research and publication on foreign and domestic policy issues. Mr. Weigel is perhaps best known for his widely translated and internationally acclaimed two-volume biography of Pope St. John Paul II: the New York Times bestseller, Witness to Hope (1999), and its sequel, The End and the Beginning (2010). In 2017, Weigel published a memoir of the experiences that led to his papal biography: Lessons in Hope — My Unexpected Life with St. John Paul II. George Weigel is the author of more than twenty other books, including The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God (2005); Evangelical Catholicism: Deep Reform in the 21st-Century Church (2013); Roman Pilgrimage: The Station Churches (2013); Letters to a Young Catholic (2015); and The Fragility of Order: Catholic Reflections on Turbulent Times (2018). His essays, op-ed columns, and reviews appear regularly in major opinion journals and newspapers across the United States. A frequent guest on television and radio, he is also Senior Vatican Analyst for NBC News. His weekly column, “The Catholic Difference,” is syndicated to eighty-five newspapers and magazines in seven countries. Mr. Weigel received a B.A. from St. Mary’s Seminary and University in Baltimore and an M.A. from the University of St. Michael’s College, Toronto. He is the recipient of nineteen honorary doctorates in fields including divinity, philosophy, law, and social science, and has been awarded the Papal Cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice, Poland’s Gloria Artis Gold Medal, and Lithuania’s Diplomacy Star.

This talk was given as part of the Thomistic Institute Conference "The Trinity and the Kenosis of Christ" held at the Angelicum in Rome on 21-22 February 2020. Martin Bieler was a lecturer of systematic theology at the University of Bern, Switzerland, and is an ordained pastor of the Zürcher Landeskirche.

This talk was given as part of the Thomistic Institute Conference "The Trinity and the Kenosis of Christ" held at the Angelicum in Rome on 21-22 February 2020. He is Lehman Professor of Christian Doctrine in the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX. For the 2018-19 academic year he is serving as Rev. Robert. J. Randall Distinguished Professor in Christian Culture at Providence College, Providence, RI. He is the author of Trinity and Truth (2000) and Christology in Conflict (1987), and is presently at work on a book on the Trinity, faith, and reason in Aquinas and contemporary Catholic theology. He is a past president of the Academy of Catholic Theology.

This talk was given as part of the Thomistic Institute Conference "The Trinity and the Kenosis of Christ" held at the Angelicum in Rome on 21-22 February 2020. She is a doctor in theology and a private docent in the department of moral theology at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. She has published several articles and books including Trinitarian Anthropology : Adrienne Von Speyr and Hans Urs Von Balthasar in Dialogue with Thomas Aquinas and Woman in Christ: Toward a New Feminism.

This talk was given as part of the Thomistic Institute Conference "The Trinity and the Kenosis of Christ" held at the Angelicum in Rome on 21-22 February 2020. Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O.P., is the Director of the Thomistic Institute at the Angelicum and Professor of Theology. He did his doctoral studies at Oxford University. He entered the Order of Preachers in 2003. His research and teaching have focused particularly on topics related to Thomistic metaphysics and Christology as well as Roman Catholic-Reformed ecumenical dialogue. His books include Wisdom in the Face of Modernity: A Study in Thomistic Natural Theology (Sapientia Press, 2009), The Incarnate Lord, A Thomistic Study in Christology (The Catholic University of America Press, 2015) Exodus (Brazos Press, 2016), and The Light of Christ: An Introduction to Catholicism (The Catholic University of America Press, 2017). He is co-editor of the academic journal Nova et Vetera and in 2011 was appointed an ordinary member of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas. In 2019 Fr. White was named a McDonald Agape Foundation Distinguished Scholar.

This talk was given as part of the Thomistic Institute Conference "The Trinity and the Kenosis of Christ" held at the Angelicum in Rome on 21-22 February 2020. He is associate professor at the University of Geneva. He previously taught at Fordham University as assistant and associate professor. He has an ongoing interest in modern Protestant theology and is currently completing a monograph on Paul’s triad of faith, hope, and love (in French). He has published several books including The Wisdom and Foolishness of God: First Corinthians 1-2 in Theological Exploration, and The Challenge of History: Readings in Modern Theology,

This talk was given as part of the Thomistic Institute Conference "The Trinity and the Kenosis of Christ" held at the Angelicum in Rome on 21-22 February 2020. Fr. Emmanuel Durandm in his research, he focused first on Trinitarian reciprocity. Subsequently, he investigated the topics of God as Father, the uniqueness and universality of Christ, divine Providence, and Creation as a call to the human person. He has taught in Paris at the Institut Catholique (2001-2014), and in Ottawa at the Dominican University College (since 2013).